The "Vile Maxim" Versus the Common Good:
Different Approaches to November

by Paul Streetwww.dissidentvoice.org
July 14, 2004

It's
a presidential election year, so it's time to observe United States lefties
engage in their quadrennial ritual of ripping each other apart over the
question of how to best respond in the good-conscience names of social
justice and democracy to the all-too-narrow "choices" presented by the
polyarchic, business-dominated U.S. electoral system. It's time to watch our
connection to common core peace, democracy, and equality agendas fray as the
election obsession sucks up scarce progressive resources. Meanwhile, it's
interesting and instructive to observe the cool, calculating, and
self-interested election angle of the great monied interests. Structurally
generated super-citizenship has a way of calming its holder's political
nerves in "America, the best democracy that money can buy."

According to a recent story
in the candid corporate magazine Business Week, "most of the financial
industry is throwing its muscle, and money, behind President George W. Bush.
Seven financial firms, led by Merrill Lynch & Co., are among the 10
companies whose executives have ponied up the most campaign cash for him"
(Mike McNamee, "Whose Afraid of President Kerry," Business Week, June 28,
2004, pp. 126-127). This is because certain key segments of the investor
class have some concerns about a possible Kerry victory: a JFK
Administration might appoint regulators who would "give the green light for
re-importing the drugs that it sells for lower prices in Canada and
elsewhere, undercutting U.S. profits." And "Kerry's appointees could
pressure drug makers and pharmacy benefits managers to ratchet down prices."
Wouldn't that be terrible?

Also, "auto makers could
face tougher emissions standards that would make cars more expensive"
(horrors). Certain "defense" contractors will be frustrated by Kerry's
"skepticism" towards such "big-ticket procurement projects" as "missile
defense systems," which happen to be insanely dangerous for humanity and are
described by Business Week as just another investment commodity. "Oil and
coal drillers" could "expect fewer tax breaks" under Kerry (another tragedy
that might at least slow U.S.-led environmental suicide) and Business Week
thinks that "Kerry could also upset markets with his trade policy" (not
likely), which has "has veered left toward 'fair trade' protectionism."

But, the magazine reports,
the people who own the country are not especially worried over the prospect
of a Kerry White House. "After all," Business Week observes, "stocks have
historically fared much better under Democratic Presidents than Republicans.
Since 1929, stocks have returned an average of 9.5% a year, after inflation,
with a Democrat in the White House, vs. just 2.3% under Republicans."
Moreover, the plutocratic winner-take-all electoral system of congressional
incumbency protection, whereby politicians choose the voters, in a great
democratic inversion (covered in supposedly shocked terms in a recent
Business Week cover story titled "Does
Your Vote Matter?"), will keep the most reactionary of the two business
parties in control of the House of Representatives for some time to come.
This will make it impossible for Kerry to rollback Bush's tax cuts for the
already super-wealthy.

"Gridlock can be good,"
Business Week learned from Tom Gallagher, "a Washington-based political
economist" with a corporate research outfit called "ISI Group Inc."
Gallagher is thinking, no doubt, of the fantastic profits that
super-privileged Americans enjoyed during the roaring 90s, as wages
stagnated and extreme poverty rose (even in the face of rising labor demand)
under the political reign of a Democratic White House and Republican
Congress (see Robert Pollin's excellent critique of
Clintonomics in his book
The Contours of Descent [2003])

According to Business Week,
"a Kerry win would likely mean a return to divided government -- and that
often suits investors just fine." Governmental division works against "bold
policy moves" - you know, stuff like national health care plans, sweeping
alternative energy programs, the rebuilding of public transportation
systems, and numerous other things that large numbers of Americans need and
want in the industrialized world's most unequal and wealth-top-heavy
society.

Yes, gridlock is more than
okay with the economic royalty. The money lords love it when the people and
"their" government are divided and weak. Capital rules by pushing certain
projects and policies through but just as significantly by preventing other
projects and policies from being enacted or even gaining consideration. It's
as much about what it stops and prevents as about what it starts and enacts.

At the same time, Business
Week observes, certain investors could expect to do very well under Kerry,
including hospital chains, (who will "have less trouble collecting big
bills" under Kerry's catastrophic medical insurance plan), "homeland
security" contractors, and insurance companies. The leaders of the last
group "will breathe a sigh of relief if Bush's plans to expand tax-free
savings accounts -- low-cost competition for pricey annuities -- fade away."

Whatever, in a presidential
election that is "too close to call," Lehman Brothers analysts are offering
their clients both a "Bush portfolio" and a "Kerry portfolio." The first is
"larded with stocks of oil drillers, automakers, mutual fund advisers, and
high -priced retailers. The second is "heavy in homebuilders, life insurers,
Fannie and Freddie, and midrange retailers."

But of course, that's just
another version of the old big money game of betting on both horses,
reflected in campaign finance data showing that wealthy interests give to
both Democrats and Republicans. When all basic moral and political
considerations are thoroughly drenched in what Marx and Engels famously
termed the "icy waters of egotistical calculation" (the chilling ethical
core of capitalism), then its all about playing the situation to your best
capitalist advantage.

Latest investor poll, for
what it's worth: the Bush portfolio has been lagging its Kerry competition
by 8.7 percent since April.

It's all about
self-aggrandizement in the sickening "greed-is good" world of the rapacious
"monied incorporations" that Thomas Jefferson and James Madison tried to
warn us about.

Whether we are Green,
Naderite, left-Democrat, Marxist, anarchist or whatever, (and whether we
like or hate Michael Moore's movie), we would do well to remember the
continuing difference between progressives and the "economic elite." Left
and left-leaning Americans often argue terribly with each other about
elections, movies, and other matters. But at least we are debating how to
most effectively advance the common good. For the Masters, whose "vile
maxim" (Adam Smith noted) is "all for ourselves and nothing for other
people," the very notion of the common good is at best naive and at worst
depraved.